On Alltop and RSS For The Masses
Today Alltop, an aggregator of RSS feeds, launched. It's a very similar product to one of my daily refreshes, OriginalSignal. Only Alltop covers a much broader range of topics, 40 in total. Alltop's selection of feeds is savvy and wide-ranging - and I'm not just saying that because ReadWriteWeb is the first feed listed in 'Social Media' (although I am very pleased about that!). The service is being positioned as 'RSS for the masses', because it makes it very easy for non-tech people to find new sources to read.
Founder Guy Kawasaki described Alltop as "an 'online magazine rack' that displays the news from the top publications and blogs."
There have been varying reactions to Alltop. Mike Arrington at TechCrunch wrote that Alltop is "just a big pile of nothing." I think he was referring to the fact that it is relatively easy to create an app like Alltop - and he referenced the Web 2.0 Workgroup homepage (developed by Fred Oliveira a few years ago) as an example. Others think that Alltop is filling a need, for mainstream people to get into the RSS reading scene. Mick Liubinskas wrote that "I can see my wife and even my dad using it." Mick said that "they are now both looking for stuff to read and are ready to venture outside of the news sits they know, but they are not quite sure where to start."
Chris Shipley of GuideWireGroup came to a similar conclusion to Mick, noting also that the sourcing of material is an important part of Alltop. Chris said that Alltop is "a collection of the stuff that top bloggers, Twitterers, and social media buffs like to read. It’s not the wisdom of crowds, so much as the wisdom of the most engaged social media advocates." I agree with Chris that the content selection on Alltop is smart and savvy - these are quality blogs. Certainly Alltop has a much broader set of sources than its inspiration, PopURLs (a collection of popular, but slightly cliched by now, blog and social media sources).
I like Alltop. It is a simple app, so I think Mike Arrington had a valid point there. But it's effective and it is definitely an easy scan for people looking for social news to read. It won't satisfy many early adopter types, who will continue to use the likes of Google Reader and Newsgator for 'heavy lifting' of RSS feeds. And early adopters will continue to use the likes of Netvibes and Pageflakes for their Alltop-like reading - i.e. when you just want to scan a bunch of your top news sources - because those apps are much more functional and configurable than Alltop.
Will Alltop entice mainstream readers to follow blogs and use RSS more? I hope it does, but there is still a psychological factor to overcome in getting mainstream people to read blogs. While some people recognize that blogs are as much a part of the news ecosystem as mainstream media these days, many others still see blogging as a way to let the world know what you had for breakfast. So a service like Alltop is unlikely to change the latter attitude, which is unfortunately the most common one (not helped by mainstream media, which often portrays blogs as superficial social networking sites).
RSS for the masses? Not sure I'd go that far, but Alltop is a nice, simple service that you can start pointing your non-geek friends and family to.
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I think it's sad that something like this gets so much press just because the name behind it. Guy's not a bad person, and he does have a attention grabbing personality, but he's far from a guru in the world of tech.
Posted by: skeptical | March 11, 2008 4:57 PM
Arrington's point is a bit simplistic. (then again he gets his traffic by being contrarian anyway). For example, whats techcrunch, but a guy writing about startups ? In fact, it's just a guy writing isn't it ? MySpace minus OMG Ponies> ?
Of course, the difference between techcrunch and my blog is the entire point.. He's MUCH more focused, has MUCH better sources, a better writer in the first place etc. It's the same thing with Alltop - the interface and selection of feeds is the entire point, and is what it (an Popurls and others) will live and die by.
Posted by: martin english | March 11, 2008 5:02 PM
Heyy...Alltop did not just launch today. This one's been around for a little bit actually...
Posted by: Tiffani | March 11, 2008 6:03 PM
I had a quick look at Alltop and I just re-realized that the box-model of displaying news simply doesn't work. Look at it, its got 3 columns of headlines in little boxes. It is not convenient to scan through the headlines from left to right. Netvibes, Pageflakes make this same mistake.
I love Guy Kawasaki and swear by his book (Art of the Start), but this doesn't cut it. When the page loads, where is the user supposed to look ?
I'm one of the geeks behind Alertle but frankly Alertle is the only feed reader out there with a remarkably different, fresh and simple interface (http://www.alertle.com). Apart from that the choice is between a boxes model and a email-like model. Alertle was profiled here on RWW not long ago: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/alertle_wants_to_make_rss_main.php
Posted by: Varun Mathur | March 11, 2008 6:07 PM
Yes, the design is simple, and yes, anyone could have done this - but 'anyone' didn't do Alltop, Guy Kawasaki did it. And the value in this site is Guy's selection and categorisation of the feeds that are displayed. He's selected the best and most relevant feeds on the web and put them into simple and easy to use categories. This may look simple but the value is in the content.
Posted by: stuart | March 11, 2008 6:08 PM
I had a quick look at Alltop and I just re-realized that the box-model of displaying news simply doesn't work. Look at it, its got 3 columns of headlines in little boxes. It is not convenient to scan through the headlines from left to right. Netvibes, Pageflakes make this same mistake.
I love Guy Kawasaki and swear by his book (Art of the Start), but this doesn't cut it. When the page loads, where is the user supposed to look ?
I'm one of the geeks behind Alertle and frankly it is the only feed reader out there with a remarkably different, fresh and simple interface. Apart from that the choice is between a boxes model and a email-like model. Check out its 2 mt demo on YouTube and you might agree with me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztQJ4ec1aWs
Posted by: Varun Mathur | March 11, 2008 6:14 PM
I used to read original signal, then I felt overflooded with information. This led me to subscribing a set of handpick feed via Google Reader, thus I no longer visiting originalsignal
And now, having use Google Reader for a while, I miss the birdview UI of originalsignal (and alltop). It's a great tool to scan the whole feed to look for something interesting. This birdview UI will be a great candidate to replace Google Reader's "Home"
Posted by: Akhmad Fathonih | March 11, 2008 6:47 PM
Great points covered Richard.
Interesting that the TechCrunch post was up, then pulled, then back up again:
http://www.valleyzen.com/2008/03/11/techcrunch-censors-alltop-post/
At ValleyZen there is a video interview with Guy on the eve of the beta launch that gives additional insights into the thought process behind Alltop:
http://www.valleyzen.com/2008/02/08/alltop-all-zen-launching-today/
Posted by: Drue Kataoka | March 11, 2008 7:27 PM
Varun, the user is supposed to look TOP LEFT -- especially on the 'Social Media' page ;-)
Posted by: Richard MacManus
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March 11, 2008 7:38 PM
Alltop will live or die based on the strength of the feeds it has selected. Only time will tell if Alltop has chosen the right feeds or be flexible enough to change them if it hasn't. Otherwise, it's just a dirty great big blogroll, isn't it.
Posted by: Shane | March 11, 2008 7:55 PM
Check out this one page viewer - it was just reviewed in the Boston Globe:
http://www.newsflashr.com/feeds/technology_blogs.html
Posted by: Gordon | March 11, 2008 8:07 PM
Shane, that's a fair point. One thing I forgot to mention is that there should be some kind of application process where blogs can apply to be included. I wouldn't want Alltop to become the Google News of 'blog start pages', where it becomes frustrating for people who can't get in.
Posted by: Richard MacManus
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March 11, 2008 8:17 PM
The tech behind the aggregation / rss parsing is simple. Tuning each site to quickly display 400-500 posts formatted with hAtom and js previews takes a little bit more effort.
None of this matters, of course, to the intended audience of Alltop. So far, readers have been more interested in the ease of use, lacking distractions, and the content from the 3,500 or so feeds gathered for today's intro.
Anyway, good review. Maybe there will be more to talk about down the road.
Posted by: Aaron Mentele | March 11, 2008 8:44 PM
Amazing the talk this guy could cook up, but in the end its a simple concept that works!
I check out http://www.sportsnipe.com for sports, http://web20.originalsignal.com for my web20, http://popurls.com for social sites....
id much rather do this than manual adding to my reader that ends up getting lazy..
Posted by: Josh | March 11, 2008 9:39 PM
Interesting that in the end the main appeal of Alltop will be its selection of content. Like Yahoo in its beginning, it is really a directory. Pretty nice one though.
Richard, I think librarians and others teaching blogging would find this site useful for their clients. Although I am APPALLED that there is no Books section in the Culture category. There is a 'Best of' British book blogs site, Britlitblogs.com, that looks a bit like Alltop without snapshots. I do hope Kawasaki fixes that sometime - there are plenty of A-list book bloggers in the States who would be happy to talk to him if he wants some content evaluation.
Posted by: genevieve | March 12, 2008 3:17 AM
In fact, he might like to contact M.A. Orthofer, editor at The Complete Review, who has a spiffing list here,
http://www.complete-review.com/links/bloglink.htm
Posted by: genevieve | March 12, 2008 3:20 AM
Kawasaki's approach to web 2.0 apps isn't new, but he's giving it a very minimalist and pure approach that really seduces me. Whether it's about extreme simplicity in design and interface like Alltop, or by using Wordpress as a platform to develop web-apps like truemors, he's pushing the web 2.0 concept to new limits and releasing pretty interesting stuff.
I'm not a Truemors fan (cultural gap, I guess), but even if I'm a big RSS user, I find Alltop pretty useful to myself: it lets me have a more focused Netvibes and and leaves my extensive rss collection to my desktop feedreader.
I love the simplicity of the concept (even if it's not new), and the minimalism of it's user interface.
@skeptical
Come on... Guy Kawasaki has been a Guru since I was 18 yo (I'm near 40 now), he got me into GUI, witch lead me to web app and his books where great inspiration for me and most probably for many other.
Posted by: Mr Boin | March 12, 2008 4:02 AM
It is like signals and is brand new site. Also they have a little problem with mozilla view.
Try http://pagerss.com one different page rss reader.
Regards one reader :)
Posted by: Page rss | March 12, 2008 4:43 AM
One problem is: All Top is the top content “according to who?” This has always been the bane of web directories of all kinds.
Take a look at http://library.blogbridge.com. It’s an analogous idea to AllTop with a big difference. It is curated by experienced experts in each field, who reveal themselves so you can assess for yourself whether their concept of the most important feeds is credible or valid.
(By the way, while part of the BlogBridge project ( http://www.blogbridge.com/look ) anyone can use http://library.blogbridge.com, not just BlogBridge desktop users.
Posted by: Pito Salas | March 12, 2008 5:55 AM
I opened Alltop, clicked the Social Media, scrolled to the bottom of the page - didn't find a Search textbox, or any meta content - and closed it...
Posted by: Esdee | March 12, 2008 8:49 AM
Alltop isn't anything i'd be interested in using daily, but not going as far as arrington. I've been building my own rss reader for me to use. For me I'll probably hit alltop from time to time looking for new feeds to add to my reader.
I also work in Enterprise IT and I can see where the idea of a single page rss that's clean and easy to use would be very useful. Mainly to help get everyone on the same page and not waste five minutes of a meeting explaining article about a competitor move, new law or review of a product. Remove culture and living (amoung others) and replace with competition and industry verticals. You could provide a nice single source of outside information on trends for the less techy employees.
Posted by: Shawn McCollum | March 12, 2008 9:13 AM
Genevieve,
#16 your pointer to the book site is very useful. We will build "books.alltop.com" in your honor.
Guy
Posted by: Guy Kawasaki | March 12, 2008 9:43 AM
I find AllTop to be useful, but not hard to do. I don't consider it to be a web2.0 app, it's not community driven nor is community content.
But, at the end of the day, SIMPLE is what really works.
Here's another one, mainly focus on How-To do stuff HowFeed.com. Which is similiar to OriginalSignal and the rest.
AllTop is just too broad and trying to be everything. Keeping it focus to a niche will likely to succeed in the long term.
John
Posted by: John | March 12, 2008 2:43 PM
Thanks, Guy. So glad to be heard. There be some damn good book blogs out there, and it would be a shame to miss them.
Posted by: genevieve | March 20, 2008 2:55 AM
It was great to read your thoughts about alltop and where it fits in.
This week was the first time I took a look at alltop, original signals and popurls. Visually, I liked popurls the best.
In theory I like what all of them are doing--putting an enormous amount of information in one place for us to read a headline, pick and choose what we want to read further.
On the one hand something like stumbleupon feels very random (although can be a lot of fun), and with rss feeds, you need to have done a little clicking around to get there, and then take the next step to subscribe. And of course, you still have remember and take the time to read the feed.
Some days I feel like I'm on overload--even so, I love having so many options on how to access information.
Posted by: Debbie Hemley | March 20, 2008 8:47 PM